In our years living in London, we never prioritized a visit to the British seat of government, the Westminster Palace. Of the various reasons for shunning it in the past, none stand up to scrutiny, so I’ll refrain from offering an explanation. It is part of a World Heritage site…
I finished my old Tower of London entry with a statement of intent to build a better portfolio of it on future visits. Quite a few years came and went by before I had a chance to do that. On the recent trip to London, the Tower was near the…
My standard photographic walkabout usually results in hundreds of pictures of practically anything that catches my eye. I eventually throw away around three-quarters of those “negatives” – and use only a portion of the remainder for retrospectives in this space – but my default stance is “shoot first”. That is…
It was somewhat inexplicable that after having lived in London for nearly 3 years, we have not come back to this great city in over 15 years since. Just as inexplicable is the fact that Francophiles such as we are, who used to go to Paris several times a year…
Even in a place as relatively small as Aruba, no one could plausibly claim to have seen every single thing. However, spend a full week on the island and you may be able to say that you have seen practically everything of note. I certainly believe that I have. This…
Spending whole days at the beach is never something we plan to do, and our time on Aruba was structured to alternate beach-going activities with other diversions. That included several animal-centric attractions. One was the Donkey Sanctuary, home to over 130 animals whose numbers are best illustrated with this perspective.…
For an island that cannot be considered large to any degree, Aruba offers an unexpected variance of climatic zones. Its west- and southwest-facing coasts are a vacationer paradise, with great beaches and pleasant if generally windy weather year-round. The northeast-facing side, where rocky shores abut an arid desert, is much…
As I stated in my “back from” announcement, you don’t come to Aruba to go sightseeing. You come for the beaches, for the outdoor activities, for the nightlife. None of those attractions and pursuits customarily align with carrying around an expensive semi-professional camera. And yet, I always bring the camera…
Bratislava is only a two-hour train ride away from its Hungarian counterpart. It is frequently mentioned as a capital city that retains small-town intimacy and is reasonably off the beaten path to be somewhat of a hidden gem, so I incorporated a full-day trip to the Slovak capital into my…
The pretty town of Szentendre is part of the triumvirate of the Danube Bend towns most frequently recommended for day trips outside of Budapest. As mentioned in this post, on the first of my two driving days, I managed to see some of Esztergom and could not fit Visegrád into…
The village of Hollókő, a bit over an hour northeast of Budapest by car, is recognized on the World Heritage list as a living example of rural life prior to the 20th-century agricultural advances. Something that is 300 years old and deliberately well-preserved would always pique my interest, and the…
Look at the map of Hungary about 50 kilometers north of Budapest, and you will notice how the Danube twists and turns in its flow, before changing direction completely from roughly eastward to roughly southward. The banks of the river on that stretch are colloquially known as the Danube Bend…
Although my November trip to Hungary was primarily meant for closer re-acquaintance with the nation’s capital, I wanted to take a couple of days to drive around the country and explore a few places beyond Budapest. Limitations of distances and daylight meant that I could only fit in a handful…
I would be awfully surprised if there were a large percentage of visitors to Budapest who claimed to have explored areas beyond the city center. To start with, not many people budget more than a couple of days for a visit to the Hungarian capital. Seeing the sights on Castle…
The Ukrainian-born, Budapest-residing artist Mykhailo Kolodko has erected dozens of statues all over his adopted hometown. The tiny twist – pun intended – is that these statues are miniatures, each just a few inches in size. It makes for a delightful quest to discover them in various parts of town,…
Known in the city nomenclature as the 7th District or otherwise Erzsébetváros – Elisabeth’s Town – Budapest’s Jewish District is a very vibrant part of the city, with hotels, restaurants, bars, and boutiques densely packed into a fairly compact area. The remnants of the significant and relatively flourishing Jewish presence…
There is the third component of the Budapest WH site in addition to the Banks of the Danube and the Buda Castle Quarter. Andrássy Avenue is the main artery of Pest and lies in its entirety within the core zone of the WH designation. While not unattractive, it is very busy…
Among the flow of news of terrible destruction suffered by Los Angeles’ neighborhoods in ongoing wildfires, I found a bit about the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, which avoided significant damage due to its state-of-the-art fire prevention systems. It prompted me to review my pictures of it from our trip…
Do I travel enough? Clearly, it is nowhere near the scale that I would ultimately like, but at least I have re-settled into a habit developed for many years of the BC era (“before covid”): spending my entire yearly paid time-off allowance on foreign travel. Similar to last year, I…
The Castle District of Buda is another key component of Budapest’s World Heritage designation. Its main landmarks are all well seen from the opposite bank of the Danube, as we have already observed. This post is about closer perspectives of the same landmarks as well as a few details and…